Saturday, May 25, 2013

Fighter (Air Elemental Ally)

Some fighters form allies with air elementals, giving them strange and unique powers.

Air Elemental Ally - At first level, you gain an air elemental ally. Once per day, as a move action, you may summon this ally, and it will remain for one minute per level. It fights independently under your direction.

LevelSize
1 Small
4Medium
8Large
12Huge
16Greater
20Elder

Break Like the Wind - While not flat footed, the fighter may include his armor and shield bonuses when determining his dodge armor class. The fighter ignores any movement penalties due to armor.

Not At All Shocking - The fighter gains electricity resistance equal to his fighter level.

Defying Gravity - The fighter subtracts 5 from all Jump checks and ignores any penalties associated with weight, encumberance, or armor. All his jumps are considered running jumps, even vertical jumps. The fighter subtracts ten feet from any falling damage. This increases to fifteen feet at 5th level, 20 feet at 10th level, and an additional five feet per level above ten.

Additionally, the fighter activates no foot/weight based traps when he walks on them.

Mac the Knife - Beginning at 3rd level, the fighter may treat light weapons as if they were not light when favorable. This allows the fighter to use his full strength bonus with such weapons.

Ride the Whirlwind - The fighter may use an air elemental ally to fly. The air elemental forms a cone under the fighter and is otherwise is unable to attack while carrying the fighter. The fighter gains all air elemental feats (flyby attack, finesse, etc) while riding the whirlwind. Any damage to fighter is applied to his elemental before he takes the damage.

Shocking Truth - Beginning at 5th level, the fighter gains +1d6 electrical damage when using a metal weapon. This increases to 2d6 at 10th, 3d6 at 15th, and 4d6 at 20th.

Wire Fu - Beginning at 7th level, as a free action, the fighter can fly for this round. He must touch at least one solid object during the round to maintain flight. Hitting an opponent counts as touching a solid object.

Cloud Step - Beginning at 12th level, the fighter may jump onto a cloud and overland flight at will. His flight speed is equal to his fighter level squared.

Commentary

The air elemental ally begged wushu to me. Who else should go bouncing about on wires?

This design begged elusiveness to me, so I made sure it had a great dodge AC.

‘Cloud Step’ is from Journey to the West. Brothers Monkey, Pig, and Sand all have this wushu ability.

I’m not sure that I covered everything well. This would be quite the disruptive design in a game.

As usual, this is entirely unplaytested. Use at your own risk/reward. I don’t pretend that the class will be playable up to 20th level.

This is my 26th post. I'm halfway through the year. I've given myself one year to get somewhere with this blog. At the end of the year, we'll see if I've accomplished anything.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

At first level, you gain the multiattack feat in addition to any other feats that you may gain.

Fire Elemental Ally - At first level, you gain an fire elemental ally. Once per day, as a move action, you may summon this ally, and it will remain for one minute per level. It fights independently under your direction.

LevelSize
1 Small
4Medium
8Large
12Huge
16Greater
20Elder

Fire Elemental Aura - As a free action, any fire elemental can form fire aura around you.

- In reaction to any melee attack against you, your fire elemental can damage that creature’s weapon. Your fire elemental makes a sunder roll against your opponent’s weapon. Weapons are destroyed and limbs are disabled.

- Beginning at 6th level, any metal weapon used to attack you is subject to the heat metal spell. If you are grappling, your opponent’s armor heats up. Damage per round is equal to your fire elemental’s base attack.

Flaming Weapon - At will, you can cause your weapon to flame. Your weapon now shines like a torch and does fire damage.

Flame Blade - For one round per fighter level, as a free action, you can create a flame blade. It otherwise acts as the spell flame blade.

Commentary

So far, this writeup is not quite as useful as the Earth Elemental version of this fighter. It has cool stuff. The guy is hell to attack when he wants to be. He can switch to a touch attack at times. He’s very resistant to fire.

I think this particular design needs more work and some playtesting to see how the ideas really hold up.

I think that this fighter works as in the 1-10 range, which is all that I'm concerned about. The fighter would have significant issues at 15-20th level.

Friday, May 10, 2013

At first level, you gain the multiattack feat in addition to any other feats that you may gain.

Earth Elemental Ally - At first level, you gain an earth elemental ally. Once per day, as a move action, you may summon this ally, and it will remain for one minute per level. It fights independently under your direction.

Earth Elemental Armor - As a free action, any earth elemental can form a suit of armor about you. Use the armor table below for your armor. All damage to you applies to your elemental before it applies to you. You gain the size of your elemental if the elemental is larger. You are considered to be wearing heavy armor.

You gain the advantage of the following earth elemental traits while wearing the armor:

In addition, you can use the feats of your earth elemental while wearing earth elemental armor.

You gain the push ability while in earth elemental armor. Your sheer mass lets you push other creatures around. You create no attacks of opportunity and need not move to bull rush.

Optionally, the armor can form size appropriate version of your melee or hurled weapons. These weapons will have all the properties of your chosen weapon and do damage appropriate to their size.

Stone Armor - You have a special suit of stone armor tuned to you. You can summon this armor out of the ground in one minutes, as long as there is stone nearby. This armor is too massive for others to use, but for you gives you the following AC:

OK, I admit that the class is a bit focused. It’s not quite so flexible, but it solves many fighter problems in unique ways. Get grappled? Call in a friend. Get swallowed? Call in a friend. Need a knock spell? Call in a friend. Need to intimidate a small army? Call in a friend. So, it might be a one trick pony class, but by God Almighty, it’s a mighty fine pony.

As usual, use this unplaytested class at your own hazard. It doesn’t work past level 12 because the earth elementals themselves sorta peter out. Still, suddenly becoming 40 feet tall at 20th level is really cool. How many fighters get to punch out a titan without having the word "realistic" bandied about?

Note that this fighter can use any earth elemental for his earth elemental armor. If the wizard summons him another earth elemental (up to the maximum size that he can summon), he can use that one just as readily. Importantly, he will control the armor while the wizard loses control of it. If you want to get technical, while in armor form, his earth elemental has no actions so it can’t actually do anything.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Here is yet another variant fighter mash up. Let’s have some fun with a fighter based on WILD MAGIC.

Blurb: You were raised in an area of wild magic. Wild magic is part of your nature. Although not a spellcaster yourself, you have found that your very presence warps the expression of magic in your proximity. In a magical world, where wizards are real, this greatly helps the man who lives by the sword. It also makes you a hazard to any adventuring party that you join. You are a walking time bomb.

Disruptive Aura - Your very presence causes magic to go haywire. Beginning at first level, you destabilize the magical field in your personal proximity. A spellcaster or creature must overcome a DC 10 + Fighter Level in order to affect you with magic. You always have this aura raised. You may drop this field as a swift action, but raising it again is a standard action. Any spellcaster who has spent a week or more in your presence gains a +5 bonus to this roll. Any spellcaster who succeeds in this DC quells your aura and you must raise it again as a standard action.

If a creature uses a spell-like ability against this aura and fails to overcome your DC, the creature is unable to use any spell-like ability for one round.

Beginning at fifth level, this aura extends one square, at tenth level, two squares, and at fifteenth level, three squares.

Unpredictable Amplifier - Beginning at first level, wild magic might help your party, or then again, it may not.

As a swift action, help an ally. Roll d20 on the following chart:
1-3 Add your strength bonus to the caster level of the spell
4-6 Add your strength bonus to the DC of the spell
7-9 Add your strength bonus to the duration of the spell
10 The caster does not lose the spell in his spell slot
11 Single target spells are affected by the split metamagic feat. Area spells are enlarged as per the metamagic feat.
12 Maximize the indicated spell.
13-19 Roll on the strange presence table.
20 Roll twice on this table, apply any result again (even this one)

Strange Presence - Beginning at second level, you can make your disruptive aura do strange things to spells and spell-like effects. You may choose to subtract your Constitution bonus from the duration of any spell that you interact with, subtract your Constitution bonus from the caster level, or subtract your constitution bonus from the spell’s DC.

Accidental Evocation - Beginning at 4th level, once per day as a swift action, you may release an accidental evocation. Roll as if you just used a wand of wonder.

Disrupt Magic - Beginning at 6th level, you can disrupt a non-permanent magical effect. As a swift action, make an opposed check against the target spell. You use 4 + Fighter Level + Strength against the spell. If successful, you take damage equal to the spell’s DC. If unsuccessful, you take no damage.

Tap Magic Device - Beginning at 8th level, as a swift action, you can disenchant any permanent magic device to create unpredictable spell effects. Roll on the table below to see what happens. Your caster level is equal to your fighter level. Your DC is equal to the spells level + your Strength modifier.

This ability may even work while you are unconscious or dead (but not if disintegrated). If conscious, you can use this ability as a swift action. If unconscious, this ability begins working, one piece of equipment at a time, once each round, until you are restored to consciousness. Any spell is centered on you, roll randomly when in doubt, and any creature summoned is uncontrolled.

This class if for the player who just likes to mess with everything and everybody. Nobody is safe from the mischief of this character. I quite purposely pushed the envelope on this design into “not a good idea at all” territory. Only a madman or Chris Perkins would allow such class into their game, although I’m not sure about the madman.

I had fun with this fighter design. The whole idea is based on the truism, “Lean into disaster.” If that saying is true, this class takes a flying leap off of disaster and swan dives while yelling “Gygax Lives!”

For the first time ever, we have a character class that will want every +1 dagger that he finds.

As usual, I did not design for the upper levels because they don’t interest me.

The tables could use some work. The random spell table could really use some jiggering to better match the character’s level or the level of item sacrificed. The Magic Item Compendium’s tables would be really handy for this class.

All in all, I am very happy with this design’s idea, but I am unhappy with my own rules. However, not being one to limit myself in the face of lunacy, I present these rules anyone. Maybe one day I’ll playtest my way through this and actually make it work.

If somebody does actually play this character class, please drop me a line.

So far, after having done four of these more magical fighter designs, I am well pleased. The concepts behind each have been different, yet they each came out feeling like a fighter.